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IEF Qualifier Winner's Interview

Thursday, October 2nd, 2014

Interview with Ciboulette of Celsia, winner of the IEF 2014 EU/US qualification.

GM: First of all, thanks, Ciboulette, for taking the time to answer to our questions and congratulations to you and all your team for that victory Celsia obtained in the regional qualifiers for the IEF 2014. It was indeed a very exciting final the ones you had with the other contender, Innovare, and we hope you are already training and getting ready for that trip to China.

Cib: Hi Haruki, thanks a lot, I'll answer to this interview with pleasure!

GM: So, to start with, could you share with us a little recollection on Celsia? The origins, the first steps and the development of the team… How did it all begin and which is the current formation and status of the group?

Cib: Well, to begin with, Celsia was created on June 2013, with the goal of winning everything on AVA by playing with friends only. The team was composed originally by TimmyPurno, Doliprane, DirtyBugger and Zarskyy. We did pretty well during the first three months, reaching around 5 times tournaments Top 3 with a first place on the Summer Cup 2013. After that, IeSF arrived and our players went to their own national team, then we stopped playing for few months. We all separated in different teams and around May 2014, Doliprane, Timmy and me wanted to do that again because we really enjoyed to play with each other. Later coldowner and devilleet joined us and now we were looking for only one goal: the AIC 2015, because three of us were not 18 for the 2014 one. One more time we showed that we could do really well in the competitive scene. But the IEF news went out for September 2014 and devilleet + coldowner weren't still 18. So we decided to go for it without them and give it a try. We asked Lettu, a known Finnish player who had been to IesF 2013, to join us in August, and started practicing with four main players plus one substitute, still waiting for our main 5th. ViTsi joined us two weeks before the tournament. We played the August Cup 2014 as a tryout, and at the end Doliprane chose to leave us for personal reasons. At the same time, team PENTA was dissolved and we asked CypheZ, old Crackheads player, to join us since he was free at this moment.
We had then two weeks to practice together. It was indeed really short but we knew that we had a huge potential to do good to the IEF qualifiers, with 4 players who already went to a LAN on AVA and Tim, who has always been known as an awesome player. The Team was complete: TimmyPurno as a sniper, Lettu and Cyphez with their main rifflemen, ViTsi and his adaptability and me as a point man. We practiced around ten evenings during the two weeks and the chemistry was there. This boosted our confidence.
When the tournaments started I was playing the leader role as the team caller, but I wasn't used to it for a while, and after we lost against Innovare on Saturday I felt it wasn't my place. I knew Lettu was a really nice caller, after playing with him and reaching the AIC 2013 qualifiers final, and as the team caller of SeFi, who placed 3rd during AIC 2014 qualifiers. So I just told him to go for it. We would obviously have better chances if he was doing that job. We already had the tactics we prepared and this, combined with his calls, made every games go smoothly and awesome. You know the end of the story...

GM: Personally, how long have you been playing AVA? What is that you specially like from the game?

Cib: I started playing AVA on April 2010, so yeah, 4 years and a half playing the game, with few 'paused' months depending of what I was doing in real life. I was 15 years old when I discovered the game thanks to my old brother, and I didn't really like it at the beginning. I was a CS player (really bad one, I admit), but well, I started playing FPS games around 14 so AVA is kinda my first FPS.
After two months I couldn't stop playing it: the game was just awesome for me. I could only play it on my laptop's brother and I remember we had this deal by which I could wash the dishes instead of him to get the computer. As a French beginner player, I joined French teams first, and after one year, I joined my first EU team (Astonish ftw), and step by step I reached the top level of the game.
What I like in the game compared to other FPS like CS is the feeling you get when you shoot and take someone down in-game. It is difficult to explain, but I never feel it in any other game. By knowing the game as the palm of my hand, and all the demolition maps as well, what I really enjoy to play is as a 'brain' player. I think I've never been that good at aiming. What I always try to do is to know before my enemy what he's going to think/do (you see what I mean) and to counter-attack this to win the round by myself, or to help my team getting a free and better position, depending of the situation. There are so many possibilities!! That's a reason why I love playing point man: you can walk/run fast and it helps a lot to play as I like to: by surprising enemies.

GM: You declared yourself an expert with the SR-2M Veresk but I wonder, do you have some special love for other AVA weapon that you can tell us about?

Cib: Well yes, in the old times, the main weapons of the competitive scene weren't the same as today, and I always loved two weapons from the beginning of AVA : Firefox and HK-416. I know that no one plays them anymore but I always enjoyed playing with these two guns. I don't even have any reasons to like them. I just do. During tournaments I'm sometimes playing as a riffle and I've been playing as a SA58 Para player for more than 2 years. I'm also using the XCR Kraken now since it is a powerful and accurate weapon allied with an awesome wall bang potential.

GM: Ok, choose your top three maps in Demolition.

Cib:1 - Hammer Blow 2 - Cannon3 - Black Scent

GM: Going back to Celsia, the team has already a great number of ESL prizes and won cups and you guys are kept rather active and can consider yourselves veterans in that respect – how do you find the eSports scene of AVA?

Cib: Yes, as I said we did some good results in the last two years with Celsia, even if it wasn't the IEF team we have at the moment. I think that the eSports scene of AVA has grown a lot in the last 2 years, with around 20 solid teams that you see on every tournaments now.
But the main issue is that you always know who is going to be in the top 5, and there haven't been any real new teams to add to the list, with new players who passed through the barrier of the top of the scene for a while. I personally think that the prizes you get by winning monthly tournaments in this game cannot attract any new players. People want money, you see, like everything in life when they work for something. They spend time for it, leaving other priorities to play the game, so they want to get something real in exchange.
At the moment, the only real things are the LAN tournaments you can go twice a year. As well, I think the information about events should appear a lot sooner to help people to get ready for them on the best way.
One huge thing that should be cared about: the Match Channel. When it started, everyone was really excited about it, right, and a lot of teams spent their time on it to reach the top. But here again: prizes weren't enough, with few timed weapons for the top 3 teams. It should as well be fixed as soon as possible, taking care of all the issues it has at the moment.
One last thing, that is very important as well, is the possibilities you have in the game at the moment when you're starting it. Even if professional players from another game would like to try AVA and start playing it seriously, there is a huge barrier: you have to spend a lot of money in the game to get the weapons and the equipment you need to become a competitive player, otherwise it will take years to be able to do any little things on the scene. But step by step, I think that AeriaGames is realizing it, even if it still needs a lot of work at the moment. I hope they are working on it.

GM: You yourself traveled last July to Taiwan and were in the front line of the AIC 2014, with PENTA Sports. How does it feel to have again the opportunity of representing UAVA in another big tournament, such as the IEF 2014?

Cib: I'm just so excited!! The Taiwan trip was probably the best trip I ever did in my life, although we didn't perform as good as we were looking for with PENTA. I met so many players from all around the world that I probably learnt more in a single week than in 3 years on UAVA by talking with these Asian teams. But this time, as I said before, four of us already went to at least one AVA LAN, and we're not going to IEF for nothing. I'll represent my country as a French player, and my mates will do their best to show that UAVA can still do something good on the world scene.

GM: The final round of Celsia versus Innovare left us with a great number of highlights. It was overall very exciting since both teams showed that they had what it took to travel to China. What goes through your mind when the final moments of a qualifier arrive, when you are already in the battle ground, and the last demolition game starts?

Cib: I remember my first final, on AIC 2013. After we defeated Defkon with Caprice (which was, by the way, an awesome performance by our team) we had to face CrackHeads in the final and I just felt like it wasn't possible to do it. I was frightened and I played really bad. But I said to myself that I would never do such a mistake again.
Against SeFi during AIC 2014 final, or during the IEF 2014 against Innovare, I had absolutely no pressure, I was really confident in my capacities to do well and I knew that whatever would happen, I was doing more than my best on every round, every second. Each round you win or you lose, you don't have the time to think about it, the next one has already started, you have to focus on it so you do not fail. But yes, when you're in a clutch situation during this kind of event and you win it you feel like nobody can stop you.

GM: We do not want to reveal all your secret tactics but, how are you guys preparing for the upcoming Chinese tournament?

Cib: After the finals we did a little break because we spent our whole time the two weeks before. Also, two of us had to start university back on September, so yes, we did a break to be fine with everything in real life before starting again. We're currently looking at our tactics, at what was wrong, finding the weak spots and where do we exceed, and what to do to make everything close to perfection.
I personally like to watch tournament videos to see what I did wrong and what others are doing that I could learn for the next time. I also spend time in the practice channel to try new strategies, nade spots and stuff like that.

GM: And talking about the IEF2014: Asiatic players are rather impressively good individuals with outstanding skills when it comes to this kind of events. This could even be a little bit intimidating at first. How do you feel about their general performance and how do you see your possibilities in this occasion?

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Cib: Well, I think that my whole team, who has seen and played against Asian players except for Tim, feel that most of these players don't have better skills than we do, except for ahq-esport and Detonator, who are paid to play the game and are consequently above everyone. But yeah, for the others we're not scared at all. The only advantage that they have is the time they spent together and their team play that was really better in the past than ours. But we are consequently looking and working to correct that.
I think that if the chemistry goes as good as it went during the IEF tournament, we can do something during the LAN, and we're not going to China to be knocked-out at the first game.

GM: Thanks a lot for your time! Would you like to drop a message to all your followers and the community of AVA?

Cib: A big thanks to Celsia, IEF members as well as my best friends in the game: Doliprane, Timmy, devilleet, coldowner, IRl, Furi, Zarskyy, qualM, pP, kRooN, Gravity, i3P1…, all the frenchies that will recognize themselves in this message, every player and team that helped me to reach the top of the scene on AVA, SoleariS, Astonish, Caprice, and all the others.
Another big thanks to all the followers of our team, all the message I receive every day in game to congratulate us are just awesome, thanks to everyone.
And to all the UAVA community. I know as you guys do that this game can be one of the best Free-to-play FPS, and even if things go wrong sometimes, keep showing that you like AVA, and do your best to make it competitive and to reach the top of the scene!

IEF Qualifier Winners

Tuesday, September 9th, 2014

The European and North American qualifiers for the International e-Culture Festival 2014 was taking place last weekend! We are proud to announce the winning team, which will travel to Guangzhou, China from November 9th to 11th for the IEF LAN tournament and meet the best teams of Asia to compete for a great cash prize pool of $20,000!

A lot of line-up changes in different teams occured for this qualifier. At the end of the Playoff Bracket Celsia prevailed their claim on the tickets to China after an intense battle with Innovare during the Grand Final!

Congratulations to the winner! We also want to give some Kudos to the top teams which participated in this tournament, the best 4 of the IEF Qualifier - Playoff Rankings are:

Check out their ESL Team page and give them some cheers! Furthermore all four teams will receive a very sportive weapon of the upcoming Mega Capsule generation! You will love this goody!

Do you want to take part in future E-Sports events for A.V.A? Check out the ESL page for upcoming events and our eSports Blog for the latest news about the LAN tournament and insights about our best teams!

Close-up: CrackHeads

Sunday, July 6th, 2014

This week's close up is dedicated to CrackHeads:

"Crackheads and SeFi made short work of the competition, as they proceeded to meet each other in the WB Finals. A maniacal Bo5 series ensued with three maps ending 7-6. Crackheads had emerged victorious, with a trip to Taiwan secured."

Qualifiers will be broadcasted from Garena's studio on July, 16th and 17th. Three qualifier matches will take place at the same time, one of them will be broadcasted by Garena.
CGO will provide an English stream for all selected matches, livestreams are scheduled for:

Next week we will introduce the AIC teams with a team profile and their line-up! Stay tuned!

Qualifier Recap

Saturday, June 21st, 2014

Teams, players, and sponsors all showed their interest and passion for Alliance of Valiant Arms during the AiC Qualifier Weekend. AiC spurred much competition within the A.V.A community for many weeks, which brought dozens of intense and heart pounding matches throughout the qualifiers.

The best teams from Europe, and North America competed in their respective qualifiers on June 14th. Those who could place Top 4 were then seeded into the 8-team AiC Playoff Qualifier on June 15th. The best games A.V.A has ever seen took place, while two teams earned their rights for a fully paid trip to compete in Taiwan for the main AiC event.

Sponsors Razer, and Aeria Games both supported the event with a large selection of prizes. Those coming first or second could look forward to a Razer Kraken Headset, 6.5k AP, and 5 in-game weapons each. Those in third had the potential to win a Razer Destructor Mousepad, while those who placed fourth would bear the Razer Messenger Bag.

All matches were caught live by CGO Media, with casting from Stoner and Ink. VoDs, and other highlights have been made available to relive the action or to catch up on any missed games. Social media support came from Rush-Zone, plenty of Facebook groups, SnowShovelAVA, KimpahAVA, and the official A.V.A FB page! A joint community effort saw the AiC Qualifier Weekend to new heights.

EU Qualifier

Over 30 teams signed up for the AiC EU Qualifier. All the top EU teams were present, and an exciting slew of matches took place.

Crackheads, and Semper Fidelity went undefeated through the qualifier. While OneH1T and PENTA eSports lost once, but managed to pull through. The definitive top 4 EU teams had qualified!

NA Qualifier

With just 10 teams registered, the AiC NA Qualifier had every match count. Get knocked down early, and you may be eliminated by the steep competition.
MonoManiac was the only team who qualified with not losing a single match. Meanwhile, Artifex, Curse, and Please all qualified after having lost at least 1 match. MonoManiac had set their standard as a clear favourite.

Playoff Qualifier

Day 2 had arrived and a mountain of competition was before each of the teams. Eight of the best teams were about to be put through a rigorous process to determine who gets to represent EU or NA at the AiC main event in Taiwan!
Semper Fidelity and Crackheads made short work of the competition, as they proceeded to meet each other in the WB Finals. A maniacal Bo5 series ensued with three maps ending 7-6. Crackheads had emerged victorious, with a trip to Taiwan secured.

In the Losers Bracket, PENTA eSports had been busy battling their way to the LB Finals. There, they sought revenge against Semper Fidelity who had beat them twice during the AiC Qualifier Weekend. In one of the craziest Best of 5 series A.V.A has ever witnessed, it was PENTA eSports who emerged with a 3-2 map win score.

AiC Taiwan 2014 - July 15th to July 20th

The final tally has Crackheads, and PENTA eSports heading to Taiwan to compete in the AiC 2014 main event from July 15th to July 20th. Each team will enjoy their Razer Kraken headsets, a fully paid trip to Taiwan by Aeria Games, and a chance to compete against 7 of the best international teams in Alliance of Valiant Arms! Watch the main AiC stream, or catch the English live stream on CGO Media!

Qualifier Winners

Thursday, June 19th, 2014

The European and North American qualifiers for the A.V.A International Championship 2014 was taking place last weekend! We are proud to announce the two winning teams, which will travel to Taipei, Taiwan from July, 15th to 20th for the AIC LAN tournament and meet the best 7 teams of Asia to compete for an amazing cash prize pool of $50,000!

The big favorite of last year's competition 'CrackHeads' convincingly won all games from the regional European Qualifier through to the Playoffs on both days! They are the strongest team of UAVA to enter AIC 2014!

The second winner surprised to be a new team called 'PENTA Sports' (ex Jack in the Box). The line-up is build of old AVA veterans. After their sudden success in this qualifier they even shot a sponsorship - a nice and fast rise!

Congratulations to both teams!

We also want to give some Kudos to the top teams which participated in this tournament, the best 4 of the AIC Qualifier - Playoff Rankings are:

Check out their ESL Team page and give them some cheers!
Furthermore all four teams won great peripheral prizes sponsored by Razer, one of them was the Razer Kraken Pro!

Do you want to take part in future E-Sports events for A.V.A? Check out the ESL page for upcoming events and our AIC Blog for the latest news about the LAN tournament and insights about our teams 'CrackHeads' and 'PENTA Sports'!